Electronic messages are pervasive in today's society. Electronic messages are used to communicate via electronic mail (email) systems, chat room systems, instant messaging (IM) systems, electronic discussion group systems, and the like. Electronic messages have become the preferred method of communication for many. Moreover, the advent of the Internet and the World-Wide Web (WWW) has substantially increased the trend of using electronic messages for communication.
Generally, when a message is constructed it can include a variety of data types, such as text data, image data, audio data, video data, and forwarded emails. The message can also include attachment data, such as when an email includes an attached word processing file, a presentation, an image, and others. When a sender of a message desires to send the message to more than one recipient, then the entire message is sent as a single version of the message to all intended recipients.
However, if the sender desires to add some confidential comments, notes, and/or attachment data for a specifically identified recipient, then the sender is forced to send a separate version of the message to that recipient with the confidential data. Yet, even in these instances, the sender may not be able to prevent the recipient of the confidential data from copying or resending the confidential data to someone else. Thus, the sender may elect not to electronically send the confidential data because it must be separately constructed and sent as a different version of the message, and/or because the confidential data may proliferate within a network having undesired consequences for the sender.
Conventional messaging systems (e.g., email systems, IM systems, chat room systems, message alert systems, and discussion group systems) do not provide the capability to devise and send a single message that has selective security access for each of the intended recipients. Some existing email systems permit a message sender or receiver to make personal notations within a message such that the personal notations are visible only to the creator of the personal notations. For example, some conventional email systems provide a note-taking feature that allows text associated with message data to be displayed only to the creator of the note. But no feature currently exists within email systems that would permit a note taker to send the message only once with the notes being selectively viewable by only selective identified recipients of the message. In fact, the notes are only viewable by the note taker and are usually stored on the note taker's local computing device and not on an email server. Thus, the note taker can only view his/her personal notes when they are using the computing device where the notes were originally made.
As a result, message senders often construct multiple versions of a single email consisting of different data. This can become confusing for the email senders to manage when multiple versions of a single email begin to clutter the inbox or mail folders of the senders. Each version of the email may need to be inspected and viewed by a sender to determine a desired context. Furthermore, in some cases, it may be that the multiple version of the email includes data that is not confidential but, rather, informative to a specific recipient. For example, a sender may desire to send directions to their location to a plurality of recipients. One technique for sending and constructing the email message may be to prefix different portions of the message data with a specific name of the recipient to which that portion of data is directed. However, this unduly clutters the email message and makes it difficult for the recipients to read. The problem can be exacerbated when the message is directed to recipients associated with an organizational project, where the message is directed to all of them, but each having different action items.
As is now apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art, there exists a need for improved techniques that permit a single message to be constructed where access to different portions of the message is selectively restricted based on the identity of the intended recipient. Moreover, there exists a need for techniques to restrict a recipient form reusing portions of a message that is identified as confidential. These needs are particularly desirable in email systems, chat room systems, and discussion group systems.